The Solution
e360’s automation consultants initiated the engagement with a discovery process. They reviewed the legislation’s requirements, the CURES database and lookup process, and the clinician’s workflow. The latter piece revealed the need to create a mobile-friendly solution based on the fact that clinicians traveled between facilities and offices, and would need to access the tool from all locations.
With requirements in hand, our engineering team set out to design and architect a solution to automate the CURES database lookup requirement by clinicians. Using Python GUI, the team was able to emulate a clinician’s workflow, and design a solution with the end user experience in mind. Additionally, the team’s “build by committee” philosophy ensured that the appropriate client stakeholders were involved and had the opportunity to provide input throughout the engagement. Once the initial proof of concept (POC) was approved by the client, e360 architected a production version of the solution that was deployed to a beta set of physicians for canary testing.
The final solution was an automated script that ran behind the Epic electronic medical record within each clinician’s virtual desktop. When a provider initiated a prescription for a controlled substance within Epic, our solution logged into the CURES database using each clinician’s personal login information, and ran a query of the patient’s name. The tool then created a pop-up alert with a list of potential name matches to the patient. The provider could then review the list to determine whether the patient should, or should not, be prescribed a controlled substance based on historical use.
